


some other metal than earth

by littlebluecaboose



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Dissociation, Emotional Baggage, Flashbacks, Gen, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 04:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5403632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlebluecaboose/pseuds/littlebluecaboose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[CONTAINS MAJOR STORY SPOILERS FOR BLIND BETRAYAL]</p>
<p>Danse is dealing very poorly with the state of his life. Deacon has beer and a peptalk for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some other metal than earth

Danse sits with his head in his hands and fog swirling in his brain, barely aware of the early evening bustle of Covenant around him, of the warm steps he’s perched on, the lazily setting sun warm on his knees. He’s still reeling from the shock of having his entire identity pulled out from under him. His plans for the future are gone, too. No past, no future, and he barely feels like he’s connected to the present, either. It’s like there’s a chunk of molten lead in his gut, weighing him down and slowly poisoning him. It’s not hot, the way melted metal should be, but it fills him with a dull warmth, in the sluggishly sickening way DC got in the summers, down by the river where the humidity itself used to be radioactive from the water, leaving everyone around it sick for months.  
  
He can picture the lead inside him, the metal melting and swirling its way through his body, filling his veins instead of blood, closing off his lungs until he suffocates, dripping out of his mouth and eyes as he desperately tries to draw breath into his body, breath he doesn’t even need, and maybe like that it’d be better, easier of nobody could look at him without seeing that he’s not real, he never has been, never a human, just metal and the heat of circuits and-  
  
Something cold and solid collides gently with the side of his head. Danse gasps, reminds himself that he can, in fact, breathe, that he still needs to. He drags his hand down his face, surreptitiously checking for any leaking metal, as he turns to face the intrusion. There’s a bottle dangling inches from his face. Presumably, it’s being held by someone- Deacon, he figures, based on the bottom of the patchwork jacket and preternatural ability to sneak up on people. Danse honestly doesn’t care, because the bottle has condensation forming on it and a label that proclaims it to be Dead Redcoat Ale, and suddenly all of Deacon’s sneakiness and outright bullshitting matters a lot less to Danse, because the man’s somehow gotten his hands on cold beer and is holding it out to him like a peace offering.  
  
“It’s not a mirelurk in disguise, you can actually take it, y’know,” Deacon says, pushing the beer into Danse’s hands. He’s got another one in his other hand, Danse notes, as Deacon sinks down to sprawl on the steps beside him.  
  
“I mean, if anybody could disguise a mirelurk as a beer, it’d be me,” Deacon continues, “Hmm... maybe if I could bury it with the bottle on top, trap people into thinking they’re gonna get a nice, cold beverage, but instead they’re getting a face full of angry crab... Anyway, not the point.”  
  
Normally, Danse would snap at Deacon, ask why he’s being bothered with Deacon’s rambling, but the cold of the beer on his hands and the constancy of Deacon’s mindless chatter is cutting through the fog in his head like nothing else has, not since the cold of the Commonwealth night air while Eddie had desperately bargained for his life. Danse reminds himself not to think about it, and focuses on opening the beer and taking a sip instead.  
  
It’s damn good, better than anything he’s had in a long time, and for just a moment, he closes his eyes, imagines he’s in the Muddy Rudder with Cutler, the amiable chatter of Covenant’s residents turning into that of Rivet City’s civilians. He swears, just in that moment, that he can almost hear that punk vault kid arguing with Chief Harkness over some small offense or other, Harkness getting the tone in his voice that always meant someone was about to take a dip in the (recently, blessedly, clean) river.  
  
He opens his eyes and realizes that Deacon is staring at him. Or at least, Deacon is probably staring. It’s hard to tell with the shades, sometimes. Danse looks away, staring at the beer.  
  
“Is it safe to assume that Eddie already told everyone?” He doesn’t bother specifying what Eddie would have said. There’s nothing else worthy of a group meeting that’s happened recently.  
  
“Yeah,” Deacon says, suddenly solemn. Danse would swear the temperature dropped with the change in conversation, although that might just be due to the sun dipping lower in the sky.  
  
“Look. I’m not gonna spill my whole life story to you, and I’m not asking you to do the same. I’m not gonna pretend that we’re best friends now, because as far as I’m concerned, you’re still more or less the same person. But I’ve... let’s just say I’ve been in your shoes.” Deacon turns his head, unable to even hold the pretense of looking Danse in the eye. Danse shakes his head.  
  
“No offense, but I don’t see how you could have ever been in my shoes,” he says, keeping his voice quiet. Cait and Piper are chatting nearby, and neither of them are the best people to have around during any kind of conflict. Cait tends to try to encourage conflicts to escalate to physical fights, while Piper would probably just start taking notes for a new article.  
  
“Whatever you’ve been through, I’m sorry it happened, but it doesn’t change the fact that there’s something inherently wrong about me.” Danse’s voice sounds clinical and detached even to his own ears, hollow, like he’s discussing the sky being blue or feral ghouls being dangerous. “I don’t know what it’ll take for all of you to understand that. I can only hope it happens before it’s too late.”  
  
“Too late for what, Danse? No matter what I think of your personality or your politics, you aren’t going to convince me that you aren’t human any more than you were able to convince me about synths before,” Deacon says, voice even and calm but just that bit faster than normal. Fear, maybe. Or concern, suggests the small, struggling optimistic voice in Danse’s head, the one that always feels like Haylen peering over his shoulder. He dismisses the thought as ridiculous. Nobody is concerned for the vertibird when it crashes, only the people inside it.  
  
“You just really don’t get it, do you. Every minute that you and-” he pauses, just for a moment, just for a short breath, because he hates remembering that Eddie knows what he is, hates the way he feels that guilt wrapping long fingers around the neck of whatever small, tender thing Eddie had been carefully cultivating in Danse’s chest, with the way his bright blue eyes crinkle up when Danse says something unintentionally funny and those long legs and the way his voice had cracked when speaking to Elder Maxson, “-and Eddie allow myself, X6-88, and Valentine to remain here is like building a town on top of an undetonated nuclear missile. Sooner or later, all that’ll be left is death.”  
  
Deacon sits in silence for a moment, and Danse feels the lead slipping up through his insides again, feels sick and exhausted and heavy.  
  
“I don’t buy a word of it. Here’s what I think: I think that you want to stay. I think you want us to agree with you and try to hurt you, because that’s what you’re familiar with. It follows the rules the Brotherhood taught you, and maybe it’s scary, because you already lost what you thought was your past, and maybe most of what the Brotherhood taught you was lies. And now you get the fun and unenviable task of taking apart your entire philosophy brick by brick and figuring out what the truth really is. But we aren’t turning you out into the cold, either.” Deacon tosses his now-empty beer bottle in the general direction of X6, who catches it without looking and sets it neatly on the ground. “Good talk, good talk,” Deacon says distractedly as he stands up, walking across the settlement to congratulate X6 on ‘a really cool catch’.  
  
Danse takes another drink of the beer, noting the way it feels in his mouth and throat, cold and fizzy and nothing, nothing at all, like lead.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure that dissociation is exactly the right term for what's going on with Danse here. If you have a recommendation for something better to tag this as than that, or just want to chat, please let me know in the comments, or over on tumblr at littlebluecaboose.  
> ♥♥♥


End file.
